“The idea of community school helped my school find the place in the educational space of the town; the concept showed: school-community partnership is the progress, it is the forward movement of our education.”

        The Russian community school model appeared during the social economic crisis of the 1990’s. Krasnoyarsk Centre for Community Partnerships (KCCP), which was formed, by teachers and leaders of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from the USA and Siberia in 1997 is the center and the site of development of community education in Russia. Having studied and analyzed the international and Russian experience, the center, then called “Local Community Collaboration”, worked out the community school model (CS), which was supposed to revive the community involvement in education, but in reality it became the effective mechanism in civic society development at the local level. The basis of the model is the philosophy of the community education as the approach to the community development.

They started from the program “Corps of democratic teachers” which was aimed at the strengthening of the civic role in the educational activity of school. In the focus of the program there were teachers of History, Civics and the English Language who were supposed to become the organizers of democratic reforms in school.

So what is the community school? Community school is the school which has the aim not only in giving the educational services to pupils, but in developing the community, recruiting parents and residents to the solution of social and other problems typical both for school and the community.

It is the school, which adopts the concept of community education as an approach to the community development, which is the possibility for local people, community schools, local organizations and establishments to become active partners in the solution of local problems.

It is the school, which is going to become not only the educational establishment but also a civil, cultural, public resource center of the district, village or settlement. To fulfill all the above-mentioned things it is necessary to reorganize the activity of your educational establishment in the definite way. All the processes, which are under way in our establishments, are divided into three directions: Democratization, Volunteerism and Partnership. Every direction of community school appeared from the experience of the Siberian schools and is based on the local needs and interests. Schools filling these directions with their own experience work out three programs, which add each other. Usually these programs have the titles: Democratization of school, Volunteerism and School-community partnership. For every program there are defined the aims, there are elaborated the methods and there appears the whole system of the work for the educational establishment.

To realize the programs there are recruited interested organizations, people, but the school has the leading role.

Schools give to their graduates not only the necessary level of the academic education but also the skills of the civil activity and self-realization. Such work allows solving the social problems of the community without waiting for the state decisions and thus it reduces the social intensity. The Russian model of community school says about the necessity to bring up the sense of responsibility through the collaboration of pupils, parents, teachers, and representatives of power circles, businessmen and other members of the community to achieve the common goal – the best future for everybody.